Would anybody like to have a debate about the best age for starting school?

[emkana]

This is something I think about a lot. I am from Germany, where children start school at six/seven, though it's gradually being brought down with the aim of having most five year olds in school. School over there is certainly very different though - the children go from mostly free play at Kindergarten to very structured school, there is no "easing in" or gradual introduction to more structured work.
When I first came to the UK I thought it was terrible that children here start school so early, but then I didn't know a lot about it. Now my dd1 has just started, and I think it's great - they do so much play, but also activities that gradually introduce them to literacy/numeracy. Dd adores it all, and it's certainly a very good school. The teachers seem to be very aware of the fact that children this age still need to play mostly. It seems to me much better than going from one extreme to the other so suddenly as they do in Germany. But on here I have often read the view that school here starts too early... why do people say that? Would be v. interested in a debate!

frannyf

frannyf: this makes interesting reading...

www.shesings.baineskwaan.com/archives/000149.html

I hated taking my precious firstborn child to school when he started at 4.5

just found this thread this morning.

My DS1 was 6 on 7th sept and went into yr 1 the day before. He went to reception sept 2004 and full time nursery sept 2003 and he was more than ready when he started full time education at just turned 4 (he missed the cut off by a week). DS2 on the other hand is 3 and 3mos (end of june baby)and he starts his full time school nursery place this week, but I am concerned as he (obviously)seems so much more immature compared to DS1 when he started, so am wonderin if we are making the right move. Financially its an excellent move, he is f/t with a childminder so we'll be at least £300/month better off. I don't think age is the issue really its the flexibility of the sch/teachers/LEA to cater for all abilities, which is easy to say I know!( Teachers ,please don't shout at me!!!) Still we'll see what happens, watch this space!!!

Shall I bore you all with the NZ system of starting school? ... I have posted it on here before. I initially thought it was terribly complicated but actually I really think it is a good system.

yes, ghosty, please do.

Ok ...
It sounds complicated but actually it is incredibly simple.
Bear in mind that the NZ school year goes from January to December.
Children start full time school on or as soon after their 5th birthday as possible. Before that most (if not all) children are in some kind of preschool (public or private kindergartens, nurseries etc Public kindies only provide sessional or part time care, obviously many children go to full time daycare due to full time working parents)
So ... DS' school (roll of 580 pupils from Yr1 to Yr6) starts the year with one New Entrants class of YR1 ..(no reception)
All the children who turned 5 in the summer holidays or just before that start up that class (DS' class started with 15 pupils)
As children turn 5 they join the class. When the class is full (max. 26) they open another class and fill that up ... then they open another and so on. By December they have 4 full classes.
The major plus side of this is that all the children in each class are aged within 3 months of eachother.
It may seem that when they go into Yr2 there are some children who have only had a few weeks in Yr1 but they have a system to get round this.
When they make up the classes for Yr2 they mix up all the Yr1 classes. All those who started school before May go into Yr 2. All those who started school after May do another year in Yr1 ...
Clear as mud?
Initially when I got here I thought it was too complicated for words. I now see it as a very simple and sensible way to do it.
Also, when DS was at Kindy I was desperate for him to start school as I felt he was ready and that Kindy was no kind of challenge for him ... but looking back he really wasn't mature enough for full time school and although he is very bright academically I think he would have found school too much emotionally.
He started school at exactly the right time IMO ... He started school on his fifth birthday in a tiny little sattelite class of end of year babies, had 3 weeks to understand school and what it was, had a 6 week summer holiday and then started in the New Entrants' class of 15 kids in the New Year.
I now think that 4 is too young really ... emotionally more than anything.

See? I did bore you didn't I?

Message withdrawn

So Bloss, if my DS' birthday is at the End of November would he have started in January this year (at 5 and 2 months)? Or would he have to wait till next January when he is 6 and a bit?

Message withdrawn

Oh, ok ...
I had heard that in Australia they don't start school till they are 6 but in fact it all depends on when their birthday is?
Interesting ...
Like I have said on threads like this before I don't think it harms children to start school later. I didn't start school until I was 6 and a half. I had been in Pre-school in Holland and when I was 6.5 my parents moved to the UK. I started school not being able to read at all and could barely write my name (my spoken English was pretty poor too as we spoke Dutch at home then). The teachers were horrified ... everyone else in my class had been at school for at least 2 years. I was taken out of lessons for extra reading but within 6 months I was on a par with all the other children.

Just discovered this thread... and wanted to ask your opinions.

We are considering sending dd1 to the German School in London for a few years, where children start Kindergarten from about age 3 and preschool from age 5 years. That would mean of course that she would not learn to read and write until about age 6, later than her peers in the English system.

We would then like her to switch back to the English system and complete her schooling there.
We are a bilingual family and would like our children to be bilingual in German/English, but our concern is that, because of the delay in learning to read and write compared to their English peers, that the switch back to the English system might be difficult for them.

Any experiences, thoughts or tips would be very much appreciated.

I agree with Rainbow almost entirely. Just another thought about school. It's not just the teachers and LSAs that the children interact with but also their classmates, you cannot choose their friends and quite rightly they should be from all walks of life. This I think is the best lesson they can learn from school - to be well rounded socialable children. When our children are at secondary school/uni and then adults they will have to interact with people from all walks of life. To learn with no predjudices and preconceptions from primary age is IMO the best we can do.

Oooh. Interesting Thread.
I heard something earlier on in the year about a piece of research (I think from a government agency) which said that May-June birthdays should be given the opportunity to stay back a year if needed/appropriate. I'll google for it and see if I can find it.

My ds1 is a Feb birthday and seemed ready for school at 4.5 but going from reception to Year 1 was an Utter Nightmare. It seems to me that things go up a gear in Yr1 and school gets serious at that point.

My ds2 is an August birthday and has just gone into the pre-school nursery. If I find next yr (reception) that he is not really ready, I will be tempted to take him out until the term he turns 5. The problem with this,though, is that (apart from the fact that he would lose his place in an oversubscribed school)he would then have to go into yr1 as usual and considering my experience with ds1 of Yr1, I would be concerned about throwing ds2 cold into Yr1 with just 1 term of reception behind him.

I do think the system is too inflexible. I definitely think that kids should be tested for emotional readiness for school and the choice to keep them back a year offered if they need it.

annasmami. just from my own experience as far as I remember it. Started school, year 1, in one country, then, after a few months, went to school in another country for a few months, went back to my first school for a week or so, then back to second country, back to first country, etc etc.
Apperently it wasn't a problem...
I was brought up bilingualy, but never really learned to write my second language

The Scottish system seems to be much simpler - and more flexible - than the English system.

There is no such thing as reception: children are entitled to free sessions at nursery (either private or state) for 12.5 hours from the term after their third birthday.

Children born between March one year and February the next start school in Primary 1 in mid August of that year. (some areas start half days, some so straight in to full days - but all are full time by the end of September). If your child is not 5 by the start of the school year, you can hold them back unitl the following year. But - crucially - they don't just miss their first year of school as seems to happen in some places in England - they will then start as one of the older kids in that year's Primary 1.

You can also ask for an assessment if you want your child to start early.

So it means that in theory, in the August, the oldest chald will be 5 and 5.5 months (excluding those that were held back) and the youngest would be 4 and 6.5 months. In theory, you could have a child that was just about to turn 6 - but that is the absolute oldest. (My own ds' birthday is 10 September, so we did check whether we thought he was ready to start - but he very definitely was).

Nursery is good for introducing them to slightly more structured learning - but they don't actually start learning to read or do maths until they start P1. But from our introduction to how they are taught (workshop held last night! ), there is still a lot of play and movement and fun in what they do.

I have often said that we start them too young in this country. But having seen the way that ds is being pushed gently - but still "playing" and enjoying what he is doing and thriving on it - I am now more comfortable with it.

I am still horrified by how young they seem to go into the "compulsory" system in England? How young are they when they start in reception - and once they have started, is that you, as parents, into the authorised/unauthorised absence routine? At least an nursery, we still had the choice about when we could take holidays, as there is no issue with taking them out of nursery.

Prettybird: yes, once they start a 'school' nursery, you are into the 10 days max authorized absence routine.

Looks like I had better move to Scotland! Why is the English system so different?

Our education systems have always been different We sit different exams at secondary school.... and our kids don't have to sit SATs (I believe there is still some measuring of schools, but it is done using the teachers' own assessments).

It does seem crazy that if formal schooling is only only supposed to sstart at around 5, once you put them in to a school nursery - I presume voluntarily - then you are penalised for doing so.

There was no formal register at our (state) nursery - although they did like you to say out of couresy of your choild wasn't going to be there. Our nursery was delighted that ds went off skiing in January and to the "jungle" (aka SOuth Africa) in November. At that age, they are learning as much from all these new experiences as they are from nursery.

Personally I've never been able to understand why, with all the repeated tinkering about with the English school system, no one in authority has ever said "hey -- we have a system that works pretty well in Scotland. Why don't we try that?"

Having said that, there has been a lot of debate recently about our supposed declining standards

Having been near the top in international tables, we have now dropped way down apparently. Not sure why.

I've heard that the Swedish system is excellent!

I'm new to Mumsnet and am reading a thread for the first time, so I'm really pleased to find one on exactly the subject I'd hoped for! My ds is not 3 until January and already I have had friends asking me which school I'm sending him to next year! One friend who's dd is 3 in November is sending her to school the day after her birthday! She will be in reception class I believe, and will be going 5 mornings a week. I'm horrified! My ds would so not be able to cope with school at this age, he wouldn't cope with toilet, shoes, coats, dressing etc. He goes to a private nursery 3 days a week at the moment, and even they have asked me which school he's going to! Why is everyone so obssessed with getting them off to school so soon? My own thoughts are that I would like him to go to school on a part time basis and then be home taught the rest of the time, as well as going to clubs in whatever subject he's interested in. I read an article on the subject of part time schooling and it does seem as though the authorities have to allow you to do that as long as you can 'prove' that the rest of his education is up to scratch. Does anyone have any thoughts on part time school? Would it just make him 'different' to all the other kids and therefore subject to bullying? Or is it a happy compromise? I'd rather home-tutor him than send him to school at all, but I understand the importance of interacting with other kids and adults, and don't want him to be disadvantaged. I hated school when I was little, and looking back I felt too young to be away from my mum and I started when I was five. I hope I'm not transferring my own angst onto him, but I really believe that even 5 is too young to be at school really, let alone 3!!
On a different note, my partner and I hope to travel extensively with ds and then use the new experiences to teach him about life and not worry too much about academia until a bit later on. We can incorporate all the curricula subjects into daily routines and make them relevant (eg maths-how many miles is it to wherever? and then if we went to somewhere else, how many miles in total? If the truck does x miles to the gallon, how many gallons of fuel do we need? If each gallon is £x how much will it cost? and so on ad infinitum) not to mention all the cultural experiences and other day to day life skills he may pick up along the way. We had discussed not sending him to primary school at all, doing all his teaching at 'home' and then sending him to secondary school for the academic qualifications he needs. Does anyone have a view on this? Are we mad?! The whole thing of education is a minefield, and I'm going grey just thinking about the potholes along the way!
If anyone has any views on my comments I would really love to hear them.
Cheers

cat64, I think you are making a very interesting and very valid point there.